Hiring never stops at IT companies it seems. Propelled by new projects and increasing demand, many tech biggies have announced major plans to up their headcount.
Many technology biggies including, Dell, Infosys Technologies , Flextronics, Spryance and eLitmus have recently announced plans to hire more employees. The present figures show at least 27,000 more tech jobs in India by the end of this year and beginning of next year.
Nasdaq-listed Dell, the world's leading computer maker, has announced plans to raise its India headcount to 10,000 by December. The company has explicitly stated that India has been identified as one of the key markets for its growth, both from the outsourcing opportunities in terms of technology and customer contact but also for its core business volumes.
In his maiden visit to India as president and CEO, Kevin Rollins stated that his company is quite impressed with the quality of work from India and announced plans to ramp up its headcount to over 10,000 by December 2005. Dell India, which currently employs around 7,000 - 8,000 people, is also negotiating with a few select states to start its support centres.
After revising its topline target to $ 80 billion in another four years, Dell sees over 55 per cent of incremental growth coming from non-US markets, with greater emphasis on Asia to achieve this ambitious target.
Along with Dell our very own Infosys has also announced recruitment plans. It took Infosys 23 years to touch the $1bn revenue mark, but a mere 21 months after that to reach the $2bn landmark.
Going by the present run rate, Infosys will be a $2bn company by Q3 of this fiscal. The company is growing rapidly in both revenues and manpower. Infosys said it will add 12,600 employees this fiscal; 6,000 campus offers have already been made.
Total employee strength as of end-March '05 was 36,750, up from 25,634 as of end-March '04. The tradition of the 70:30 fresher-to-lateral mix will continue.
To accommodate more employees, Infosys' capex expenditure will be Rs 950-1,100 crore this fiscal. Mohandas Pai, Infy's CFO, said 16,000 seats are being built and the company plans to add 20,000 seats in FY06. Infy now has 33,000-plus seats for its 36,750 employees.
The Chennai-based medical transcriptions company, Spryance plans to scale up its headcount to 2,200 people by the end of 2005 from the current 1,200.
Over 80% of them would be medical transcriptionists working from home. Spryance would invest $6 million on its expansion in the country, senior officials said.
Mr Raj Malhotra, CEO, Spryance, said that the company had already invested $8 million in its Indian operations, which includes two quality butturance hubs in Pune and Chennai. It is planning to set up one more centre, he said.
Spryance also expects to growth through acquisitions, Mr Malhotra added. The company has received a total VC funding of $8 million so far from a consortium in which World Bank's investment arm, International Finance Corporation, participated.
Under its home-based medical transcription model, Spryance hires medical transcriptionists (MTs) on contract (about 950 MTs at present) who work from their homes.
Another IT major, Flextronics Software Systems will invest about $9 million in operational capital expenditure in the current fiscal besides hiring up to 2,000 software professionals during the year.
"Our opex capex excluding the facility capex will be about $9 million in FY06", Manoranjan Mohapatra, executive VP and COO, said.
He said the board of directors has recommended a dividend of 50 per cent for the financial year 2004-2005, subject to the approval of shareholders.
Mohapatra also said the company planned to hire up to 2,000 software professionals during the fiscal. Out of this, 1,000-1,200 would be freshers and the remaining 700-800 would be for lateral posts. Most of these hiring would be for IT services and some may go for BPO also, he said.
FSS operates in the telecom software space and has more than 300 customers globally. It provides convergent network solutions.
Announcing its unique recruitment model, eLitmus.com, promoted by IT recruitment firm Browse Consulting, has said that it had signed up with 53 companies in IT, BPO, Banking and Financial Services and Life Science sectors to hire 7,500 fresh graduates.
eLitmus, which launched its operations a couple of weeks back, has processed and presented 4000 resumes of fresh graduates to these 53 companies that include Dell Computers, GE, Caritor, Virtusa, ChemBiotek, among others.
"We are targetting to serve 200 firms and 250,000 graduates in the first full year of operations," managing director, eLitmus.com, Aseem Marwaha told reporters here last night.
"eLitmus.com will act as the facilitator that will remove the time and effort that companies have to go through to select fresh talents," he added.
"In our unique hiring model, candidates have the option of appearing at any of the 11 cities for a hiring potential test (pH test), which will be conducted once every month in 11 cities. The candidates have to make a one time payment of Rs. 475," he said.
Candidates also select the companies they wish to be considered for and track the status online. If pH score is not up to the desired level, the candidates will have the option of taking the test again to improve the score.
